Thieves Among Us

Would you forgive a beautiful thief?

Throughout my whole life, there have been only a handful incidents of theft that I personally experienced. There were a few incidents of our house getting broken in and a few video players and TV sets were taken, some cash, some relatively unimportant stuff and, believe it or not, food - not all at the same time of course.

Theft at School
When I was in primary school, a girl brought RM200 [US$50+] to school and was stolen right under her nose - under her table to be exact. A little girl doesn't have a business bringing that much money and left under her table unattended, but of course she was too young to know better. Our teacher had to resort to 'religion' to make the culprit [culprits rather] come out and confess.

A Relative Thievery
When theft is done by someone close to you, a relative for example, the pain cuts quite deep - you'd think only a stranger can do that to you. Sharing a room with my sister, we came home after shopping with a gift-with-purchase little perfume charm and we were so looking forward to it. But we had to put it aside when our cousin dropped by and later had to use our room to freshen up. When she was gone, so was the perfume.

I Did NOT See That
And sometimes theft happens when you're caught unaware. I mean, it's not as if you go out expecting to see people stealing. At a convenience store, I was waiting for my sister to pay for our purchase and was not paying attention to anything in particular as I usually do, when the girl behind my sister just took a few candies and put them in her pocket as she was paying for some of her other stuff. As if coming out of a stupor, I had to think a bit if that girl really did steal some candies. Accusing someone of theft when you're not even sure of it yourself would have been a mistake. I simply told my sister and my cousin [a different cousin] about it and decided to leave the matter alone.

All of these accounts happened quite some time ago and I have to say that my life had been theft-free since then.

Until recently when my brother was hospitalised and he had a few visitors and one of them simply, I'm sure of it, swiped, as in casually, took our toiletries, as he got up and go. Again, it was right under our noses but no one actually saw anything. In this case, I wasn't sure at the time. After we couldn't find the toiletries [and after the guy was long gone], I tried to recall where the toiletries were, and remembered seeing the guy picked something up exactly where the toiletries would have been. I had to check myself and refrain from voicing my suspicion since memory can distort after a time, even if it's just a short time and my emotion might play a role and created a fabricated memory. Safe to say, I haven't told anyone about it.

Why do people steal? I mean apart from the obvious desperate survival undertaking, or so they say, some people steal things that are of low in monetary value. And in my experience, among those, the ones done by someone close to you are the most hurtful.